Is the Candidate Experience Affecting your Company’s Reputation

I know quite a few months back, I wrote about the importance of the candidate experience. At that time, I was going through some hardcore job seeking and came across many different ways that companies handled their interviewing processes. Some were amazing experiences, some were a little weird, and some were awful. After a while, I took some time to research as much as I could about companies in order to better prepare myself whenever I did land an interview. Surprisingly, I learned that I was not the only one trying to learn about the interview processes at companies and many other candidates have even posted information about their interview experiences.

As a candidate, it’s amazing to come across this information. It can help you be prepared for the types of questions the interviewer might ask, how long the interview process will be, and so on. As a company, having that sort of information exposed can be terrifying. Not because candidates have a “cheat sheet” to your interviewing process, but because candidates can rate their experience with you. These candid responses can either help or hurt your employer brand and can affect the way you are able to successfully attract and engage quality talent.

As a talent acquisition specialist, I often tell my candidates to go to the website www.glassdoor.com to read up about the company I’m recruiting them for. I say to them, “I can tell you that a company is great but that will only weigh so much because you know that I’m trying to sell you on this position. Do yourself a favor and read about it from the people who have actually worked there.” After they did so, I’ve had plenty of candidates come back to me telling me how excited they were to move through the interview process. I’ve also had candidates come back to me with concerns about some of the things they learned about the company. I often try to bring this to the company’s attention when I can so they can clarify anything and ease a candidate’s mind (or do some damage control.)

Technology makes it extremely easy to research anything. Every candidate experience you provide can be scrutinized publicly. It’s important to remember these sorts of things and handle every situation with respect and care. I would also suggest that employers regularly take time to research themselves and see what their talent community is saying about them. This can help them find out which areas they can improve on in hopes to attract the best talent and keep them engaged throughout the whole process.